Does Court-Ordered Treatment for Jail's Frequent Fliers Make a Difference? Yes

There are just a few states that doesn't mandate outpatient treatment for the "frequent fliers"--the people with serious mental illnesses who repeatedly are in local jails and hospitals, the Washington Post's Annys Shin reports. The Treatment Advocacy Center, released a report this week "on the outcomes of established mandatory outpatient treatment programs in New York City and Summit County, Ohio, where assisted outpatient treatment has been in place since the 1990s." Studies of those programs found that court-ordered outpatient treatment "reduced the incidence of psychiatric emergency crisis services, hospitalization, and criminal justice involvement," Shin reports.